Obamacare Feeds Insurance Oligarchs

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

Today, a Wall Street Journal opinion column titled Big Business, Big Medicine reports the “turn toward consolidation among insurance companies,” a “dynamic [that] is leading to much larger hospital systems and physician groups, and fewer insurers dominated by a handful of national conglomerates.” If this seems an anomalous result from an administration thought to represent a departure from the corporate cronyism of its predecessor, then the blatant and contrary writing on the wall was apparently ignored.

Like all regulations declaredly subduing Big Business predominance over consumer’s lives, the new laws synthesize “public” and “private” — both of which are ultimately meaningless is our system — boosting an already corporatist economy for health services. As we might have foreseen, the politicians’ solution nurtures a condition whereby smaller “carriers will collapse under the new mandates and higher overhead.” So in the face of everything the President said about “not accept[ing] the status quo as a solution” in health care, “Obamacare” delivered for Big Insurance, a cartel that loathes competition and welcomes impenetrable regulation. Both the state and Big Business — adversaries only in the popular imagination — are triumphant, the coordination of the two saddling us with another shakedown scheme.

The United States’ health care system, a teetering house of cards that will ultimately implode, exists through economic fallacy. Even so, by the time the elites’ scheme withers, they will have already thieved more than enough from the productive class; they will, as always, leave insolvency and beggary behind, but they’ll benefit from the presumption that their hearts were in the right place in trying to give health care to everyone. The insurance lobby is getting what it paid for with these policies and this President. We can inaccurately call this process of fraud and favoritism a free market, or we accept that such are the contours of American Capitalism and subscribe to free markets as a means of disbanding these price-fixing protection rackets. Read more at c4ss.org

 

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/e156

The Robin Hood Tax is but a Bandaid on the Corporatist Economy

URL:  http://c4ss.org/content/4465

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/dz6o

5 Reasons The Future Will Be Ruled By B.S.

URL:  http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-w...

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/dltx

Michael Moore Almost Gets It Right

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

Michael Moore, writing at Alternet (“Why Republicans Are Always Worried About Their Pet Corporations Facing Any Real Free Market Competition,” Oct. 21),  makes a very acute observation:  “whenever corporate executives begin talking about how they support ‘free markets’ and ‘competition,’ check to see if you still have your wallet.”  The reason is that “nobody” — not even Marxists — “hates competition more than corporations.”

Moore was so close — but he just missed it.  Moore frames the issue as one of big corporations trying to suppress competition by weakening the antitrust laws.  “When corporate executives start pushing for ‘free market policies,’ what they mean is a government that lets them become a monopoly.”

If he’d said they want “a government that HELPS them become a monopoly,” he’d have had it just right.  The main factor behind monopoly isn’t whether government lets it exist by failing to enforce antitrust laws.  It’s whether government enables it by erecting entry barriers, suppressing competition with cartelizing regulations, and enforcing legal monopolies like “intellectual property.”  Government doesn’t “allow” monopoly.  It props it up. Read more at c4ss.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/a2x3Sm

How Public Employee Unions Can Halt the Pension Crisis

Brad Spangler at C4SS addresses the coming collapse of state-funded pensions.

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

If public employee unions genuinely want to represent the interests of their members, they ought to be sounding the alarm to man the lifeboats and prepare to abandon the ship of state.

Government, at all levels, is bankrupting itself and taking the rest of the country (nay, world) with it. An equity for debt swap is relatively common in bankruptcy cases. In this case, unions can serve as advocates and midwives for a new model of worker-owned privatization that gives rank and file public employees shares of common stock in formerly public enterprises as compensation for the default on pensions that’s inevitably coming, whether they want it to or not. Read more at c4ss.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aTcxh5

Sharp In Klein

http://athousandnations.com/2010/10/06/sharp-in-klein/

Mike Gibson at "Let A Thousand Nations Bloom" follows through on Ezra Klein's "What if the government were run more like a business?" thought experiment.

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9QzvlQ

Growing too many vegetables is illegal

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/10/weir...

The war on food continues.

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9JJGlY

An Immoral System Can Only Be Sustained By Immorality

(C4SS) Kevin Carson's comments on World War II and the Great Depression.

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

I believe that Horwitz, in countering Krugman’s argument with a description of how economic growth would be achieved in a free market, ignores the point that the industrial system we’ve had over the past 150 years hasn’t even remotely resembled a free market. It has been a corporatist system built from the ground up through overwhelming state intervention and massive collusion between big business and big government.

The state has promoted the overaccumulation of capital in mass-production facilities that are only profitable when they can amortize the cost of their expensive specialized machinery by running at full capacity without regard to preexisting demand, and then find some way to dispose of the product. And the only way to dispose of that full product has been through state-aided planned obsolescence, state-aided expansion in to foreign markets, direct state purchases of surplus output and surplus capital, and–as a last resort–massive state destruction of output and capital in war. Read more at c4ss.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/cuXLVd

One Human’s Taxation is a Tragedy; Three Hundred Million is a Statistic

Check out Third Way's publications here: http://bit.ly/acsApG

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

An itemized receipt for taxes? How lovely and desirable!

A think tank entitled Third Way just issued a paper wherein they analzed what the $5400 in federal taxes the median taxpayer of 2009 (who earned $34,140) actually purchased. Among the reactions in the blogosphere, one recurring comment strikingly resounded.

Writers noted that everywhere else an exchange of goods occurs, a bill of transfer or receipt is produced. Why is one not given to taxpayers in the same manner? An honest and baffling question for American citizens to ponder, with a lousy answer. Read more at c4ss.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9Uohdg

Victory: Internet Censorship Bill is Delayed, For Now

URL:  http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/victory-internet-c...

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/9HdcUx

The Market, Not Government, Is The Worker’s Friend

In the Center for a Stateless Society’s latest study, “Labor Struggle: A Free Market Model,” C4SS Research Associate Kevin Carson examines the role of state labor regulation in halting the progress of unionism and explores the gains made for labor by direct action and worker solidarity in the face of combined state and corporate power.

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

“The predominance of the conventional strike as we know it, as the primary weapon of labor struggle,” writes Carson, “is in fact a byproduct of the labor relations regime created under the Wagner Act. … In the system of labor relations extant before Wagner, strikes were only one part of the total range of available tactics. Unionism, and the methods it normally employed, was less about strikes or excluding non-union workers from the workplace than about what workers did inside the workplace to strengthen their bargaining power against the boss.” Read more at c4ss.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/du7zOY

Fight the Copyright Trolls

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

EFF is trying to help by assisting people in finding lower cost or pro bono counsel, allowing people to fight back without the costs of defense bankrupting them. But in the meantime, these lawsuits are causing tremendous collateral damage — to the individuals targeted, to due process, and to the legal profession (which doesn’t need another example of unscrupulous lawyering). To be clear, no one is arguing that copyright owners don’t have a legal right to protect their works. But it’s quite another thing to game the legal system — and waste judicial resources, i.e., your tax dollars — to make a profit. Read more at www.eff.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aqutAU

Banned Books Week: it's back

URL:  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/09/bann...

The L.A. Times looks at the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom top 10 most-challenged books of 2009

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/cxwlht

Public vs. Private Charity

Bonnie Kristian addresses a classic false premise.

Amplify’d from bonniekristian.com

Q. Sometimes, when I have conversations with socialists (we call them “New Democrats” in Canada), I have no idea how to counter arguments like: But what do we do about the poor and marginalized? Cutting government spending only ensures that the poor and marginalized in society become more poor and marginalized. Then the elites can grab power and exploit the poor and marginalized. We need a balance, we need more government programs.

A. The “we must save the poor and marginalized one” is certainly a sympathetic one, I must admit.  However, it’s also based on a completely false premise:  that government helps the poor and marginalized.

In fact, I completed my honors thesis on this very subject of public vs. private charity, and I can tell you that the academic literature on the subject of private charity and comparable public programs is generally in agreement:  Private organizations are more efficient and/or effective in their work. Read more at bonniekristian.com

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bT37i8

Artificial Crisis of Contention

David D'Amato points out the dangers of collusion while the MSM moans about "gridlock" and "partisan politics."

"Next time you hear a talking head lament the unwillingness of radicals to 'play ball,' consider what cooperation between agents of subjugation and theft really means."

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

The truth, that Republicans and Democrats represent the same statist orthodoxy, is decidedly more mundane and doesn’t lend itself very readily to the kinds of linguistic overkill used by the mainstream news to present the nonissues of electoral politics. Rather than the hostility-mired war zone lambasted by authoritarians rhapsodizing over the virtues of political compromise, this country’s political process is a paragon of back room collusion, of the connivance between power elites.

And, for some reason, we’re meant to prefer this to the genuine, unaffected, ideological confrontation dreamt up by the mainstream, as if the established “debate” would suffer any idea that actually was fresh or in any way subversive. In the same way that America’s civic lore spuriously pits Big Business against Big Government where the two are actually quite friendly, there is systematic denial in this country about the basic nature of the two-party system. This clueless belief in meaningful inter-party antagonism occasions another, related error, that if opposing politicians could put aside their perceived bickering their collective sage wisdom would overbear any problem society might face, the state of course possessing the magic bullets that no nonviolent institution could. Read more at c4ss.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aYZVFr

T-Mobile Claims Right to Censor Text Messages

URL:  http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/text-message-c...

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/aD06yg

One Law for the Lion, One Law for the Lamb

URL:  http://c4ss.org/content/4057

Kevin Carson lays down the law.

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/d4uxan

More Jobs for Kids

Minimum wage laws are a subtle form of discrimination against youth and other disenfranchised workers.

Amplify’d from reason.org

If lawmakers want to help kids find jobs, they would have more luck fixing the flaws in their current policies, not introducing new ones. The big culprit here: the minimum wage. Minimum wage laws kill jobs by making employing workers more expensive. Youth are especially vulnerable to this phenomenon because they, of all segments of the population, are most likely to work minimum wage jobs: the economics literature is quite clear on this point. Remove the minimum wage and you remove a substantial disincentive to hire young workers. New government interventions, like a make-work program for kids, would only be the latest in a long series of misguided, if well-intentioned, plans to help struggling workers. Read more at reason.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bC3OXu

How to Record the Cops

Radley Balko at reason.com provides the Hows and Whys plus the Dos and Do Nots of keeping cops honest.

Amplify’d from reason.com

A guide to the technology for keeping government accountable

This summer the issue of recording on-duty police officers has received a great deal of media attention. Camera-wielding citizens were arrested in Maryland, Illinois, and Massachusetts under interpretations of state wiretapping laws, while others were arrested in New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Florida, and elsewhere based on vaguer charges related to obstructing or interfering with a police officer.

So far Massachusetts is the only state to explicitly uphold a conviction for recording on-duty cops, and Illinois and Massachusetts are the only states where it is clearly illegal. The Illinois law has yet to be considered by the state's Supreme Court, while the Massachusetts law has yet to be upheld by a federal appeals court. Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler recently issued an opinion concluding that arrests for recording cops are based on a misreading of the state's wiretapping statute, but that opinion isn't binding on local prosecutors.

In the remaining 47 states, the law is clearer: It is generally legal to record the police, as long as you don't physically interfere with them. You may be unfairly harassed, questioned, or even arrested, but it's unlikely you will be charged, much less convicted. (These are general observations and should not be treated as legal advice.)

One reason this issue has heated up recently is that the democratization of technology has made it easier than ever for just about anyone to pull out a camera and quickly document an encounter with police. So what's the best way to record cops? Here is a quick rundown of the technology that's out there. Read more at reason.com

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/bcpAGr

Developing Sofware for Activists

Entrepreneurs take note, it's a growth industry.

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

Writing software to protect political activists against censorship and surveillance is a tricky business. If those activists are living under the kind of authoritarian regimes where a loss of privacy may lead to the loss of life or liberty, we need to tread especially cautiously.

This post isn't going to get into the debate about the social processes that gave Haystack the kind of attention and deployment that it received, before it had been properly reviewed and tested. Instead, we want to emphasize something else: it remains possible to write software that makes activists living under authoritarian regimes safer. But the developers, funders, and distributors of that software need to remember that it isn't easy, and need to go about it the right way. Read more at www.eff.org

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/byNqep